By Will Dabbs, MD
All professional soldiers are amateur philosophers. I was once in the desert stretched out across a bunch of lumpy rocks alongside my infantry counterpart listening to his company of exhausted grunts snoring in unison. We had been on the move for a long while already, and had a couple of hours of cherished downtime before we started all over again.
The aircraft I flew then cost more than $100 million in today’s dollars. My buddy’s NODs, weapon, and sundry gear were certainly not cheap. Uncle Sam had invested untold treasure teaching us both how to do our respective jobs. As we were discussing in soft tones the staggering amount of money spent to get the two of us to that place at that time doing these things, my friend observed, “But they sure didn’t squander much of that on accommodations, hooah?”
Corporate misery is the currency of the US Army. Collective hardship is the tool that the Big Green Machine uses to transform disparate individuals into cohesive tribes. They are lyrically good at that. They can’t technically hit you anymore, but they can sure make you go long periods without food or sleep. Sleep deprivation is a combat analog during peacetime training.
A Particularly Remarkable Repast…
Another time I went around four days without sleep, and I was starting to hallucinate. I could see smells and hear colors. It’s tough to describe. In this sordid state we finally called an admin halt for a little chow. We dropped our rucksacks and plopped down in small clots to trade out MREs.
MRE stands for Meal, Refused-by-Ethiopians. No, it doesn’t. MRE stands for Meal, Ready-to-Eat. They’re actually quite good nowadays. However, it is a soldier’s holy prerogative to gripe about his comestibles. Bartering among your buddies for the tastiest bits was high art. In our sleep-deprived state, these proceedings soon took on a fairly comedic character.
One dude I did not know well staggered up and asked if he could join us. We scooted around to make room as he dropped his heavy rucksack hastily to the ground. Before he sat down he began to gyrate in a weird, unnatural fashion. Just as he began making a spectacle of himself, he gave his right arm a little flick and a foot-long dead lizard shot out of his sleeve. The demised reptile landed unceremoniously atop my neighbor’s Diced Beef with Gravy. The recipient of the dead lizard found this experience justifiably discomfiting.
For a moment everything just stopped. The soldier upon whose MRE the lizard had been deposited then leapt up as though electrocuted. I did not fully comprehend the details myself, but he was clearly about to murder the lizard-throwing guy. Before the aggrieved party could act out his homicidal urges, however, the new man began to grunt maniacally and tear his own clothes off.
A couple of buddies and I restrained them both. Appreciating the half-naked man’s sincere agitation, the guy whose lunch had been irretrievably spoiled now powered down long enough to let things play out. The ghastly details were undeniably fascinating.
A Misunderstanding Most Reasonable…
Some 12 hours or so before, this guy’s patrol had taken a brief halt in the woods. It was pitch dark. This poor unfortunate hunkered down at the base of a tree and leaned forward to take the weight of his rucksack briefly off of his shoulders. Just as his patrol leader called for them to move again, he felt what he assumed to be a big stick fall out of the tree and slide down the neck of his BDU shirt. There was no time to tend to it, so he just wiggled around, squeezing his ruck straps against it until the thing found a handy neutral spot in his armpit. We were all so filthy that he promptly forgot it was there.
Half a day later, he had been about to sit down to eat when he remembered the stick again. Exhausted and unwilling to go to the trouble of taking his shirt off, he had just wriggled until he maneuvered the offending object into his sleeve. The next thing he knew, the big stiff lizard came flying out of his clothes and landed in my buddy’s lunch. It resembled a rigid brown scaly banana. Ever the responsible citizen, I grabbed the dead lizard and threw it into the woods.
We all resumed our meal and had a good laugh about it. Everybody except the guy with the big dead lizard in his shirt. He did not think it funny at all. In fact, he remained noticeably twitchy for some time afterwards.
Ruminations
I learned a lot of stuff in the Army. I came to appreciate the value of teamwork and sacrifice. I enjoyed the fellowship of warriors and the privilege of becoming part of something bigger than myself. More than anything, however, my time in uniform put my problems in perspective.
Nowadays, I get to sleep at home and I eat what I want. I take a shower every single day, whether I need it or not. And I never, ever worry that I might unexpectedly discover a footlong dead lizard in my clothes.
